Israel faces a growing threat from Islamist terrorists in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s foreign minister warned Monday, accusing Iran of expanding its support for the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups in order to open a “new eastern front” against Israel. Katz warned in a post on X that this is a “serious and dangerous situation” as Tehran “works to establish a new eastern terror front against Israel’s major population centers.”
Katz stated that Israel “must take terror hubs like the Jenin refugee camp and carry out a thorough operational campaign to dismantle the terror infrastructure in the camp. This is a shared interest of Israel, many regional states, and the entire free world – to halt the spread of Iran’s axis of evil.” Construction of the eastern barrier along the border with Jordan must be expedited to prevent the smuggling of weapons from Jordan into Israel, which threatens both the Jordanian regime and the State of Israel, Katz said.
His comments come as the IDF mulls forming a new army division to secure the border between Israel and Jordan, following a deadly shooting attack in the Jordan Valley on Sunday. Yehonatan Deutsch, aged 23 from Beit She’an, was murdered in a drive-by shooting attack on the road leading to the village of Rotem in the Jordan Valley.